Bal mela is an event organized in our school every year for young children till the age of 13 years who generally call kids from government schools. At the event we make an attempt to give them some joyful and happy moments and also while making them enjoy and get them to play games that we help them in developing their knowledge. I volunteered to be the coordinator of this event. There are a lot of things which I learned from this experience and they are (learning outcomes):
L1- Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
While organizing this event I had to coordinate with a lot of student volunteers and that helped me in identifying my strength which is managing people. We even had to make e-invites which made me recognize my weakness since I am not very good with editing on the computer. Also, we had made a graffiti in which me and my colleagues were not tall enough so we asked one of our classmates to help as we were making a huge rainbow and we’re going to write a quote under it. We both were unable to reach the rainbow but we knew how to use spray paint so that was an advantage.
L2- Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills.
As I was one of the coordinators of this event a lot of children were under us. We had to first make an online form for the volunteers which again was difficult for me as I am not good things on the computer so I took the help of the other coordinator to do so, we had to record the name and numbers of the volunteers on an excel sheet in which I helped me but I did do it myself. There were around 40 volunteers, so we called them all to brief them about their responsibility in bal mela and there were a variety of people from junior grades to the most senior grade so we both had to have a lot of patients to answer their queries and doubt also for discipline. We learned how to handle kids of a lot of different ages while this event took place
L3- Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.
Bal mela is one of the biggest events in our school and to organize such an event a lot of planning is required. The first thing was to coordinate and approve the games we had thought about, then was order resources accordingly (looking at the budget) and to know the perfect number of resources we did a lot of research. Then a few days before the event we had to gather all resources give them to the volunteers and execute what we had thought.
L-4 Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience.
We had a school night out just the day before the event, our volunteers and the other team was very tired as we had played for almost the complete night but still after sleeping for only one and a half hour we were awake and ready for the event with our enthusiasm and full energy, ready to stand for hour until the event was over. And also with patience to handle those kids.
L-5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
According to me, it is important to work collaboratively with others so that we can share the creativity and ideas with each other and come up with something which is beyond the capabilities of an individual. Teamwork was important here primarily due to two reasons first, we were organizing a whole huge event and had to communicate and work with each other to ensure we all were on the same page and nothing goes out of hand, second, we had to address kids which were basically strangers and we, as a team had to represent our school. So, it was imperative that we work together to give a good impression of our school and handle every difficulty with a cool mind.
Bal Mela was a lot of fun and the memories I made won’t go away for a long time. Witnessing their smiles was priceless and so was this experience. Hope to have more of these encounters as these are sheer fun and great teachers.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bnIM7c0PdgMaZEzTGUeQJUX0r15OnZuHZ_doWgL_al4/edit#gid=1692968847
